Overview

Diversity has become increasingly important as an analytic concept and organising principle in the general scientific community. Advancing diversity is seen to be even more essential in a global science–policy interface such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Being able to claim to speak from a broad perspective of geographies, genders and experiences is considered to be important if the IPCC is to produce legitimate and authoritative climate knowledge for policy. This chapter applies a critical lens to examine the IPCC’s procedures and practices in selecting its authors with respect to securing a diverse base of expertise across gender, geography and experience. It then considers how diversity is important, identifying different logics – substantive and instrumental – that have guided the IPCC’s efforts to date. The chapter concludes by considering why diversity should matter and what possibilities are opened for global climate knowledge-making through enhanced capacity building.

7.1 Introduction

The IPCC has expressed a strong commitment to ensuring that the authors selected to contribute to the assessment reports reflect a ‘range of scientific, technical and socio-economic views and backgrounds’, and also ‘a balance of men and women, as well as between those experienced with working on IPCC reports and those new to the process, including younger scientists’ (IPCC, 2018b). This commitment is reflected in the formal procedures for selecting authors. These explicitly direct that gender, geography, experience and expertise be taken into account when selecting author teams (IPCC, 2019b). Ongoing debates within the research community at large (Medin & Lee, Reference Medin and Lee2012; Anon, Reference Anon2018) have also argued for the critical importance of diversity, in terms of both the substantive validity and the external legitimacy of science. These questions are important for research practice in a broad sense, but are vital for science–policy interfaces such as the IPCC whose authority is derived from both the substantive legitimacy of its expertise and the representational legitimacy to speak for multiple voices, as well as from the means through which it negotiates between the two (Cash et al., Reference Cash, Clark, Alcock, Dickson, Eckley and Jäger2002; Beck & Mahony, Reference Beck and Mahony2018a; see also Chapter 20).

Despite the IPCC’s stated commitment to diversity, numerous scholars have highlighted the significant cultural, social and institutional barriers that many underrepresented groups face – particularly women, those from the Global South¹ and non-native English speakers. These barriers are twofold – first, in being represented within the IPCC and, second, in being able to actively participate in the assessment process. Women already face a number of significant barriers to participation in scientific work, including unequal access to funding and training, lower wages, fewer role models and greater family responsibilities (Liverman et al., Reference Liverman, von Hedemann and Nying’uro2022). It is not enough to simply be selected to participate. It is also a question of having the resources to attend meetings – including communication infrastructures for digital meetings – and then being given opportunities and a voice within the meetings (Gay-Antaki & Liverman, Reference Gay-Antaki and Liverman2018; IPCC, 2019b). A number of scholars have also focused on the difficulties facing the IPCC to advance epistemic – including the recognition of indigenous knowledge systems – disciplinary and viewpoint diversity (Ford et al. Reference Ford, Cameron and Rubis2016; Corbera et al., Reference Corbera, Calvet-Mir, Hughes and Paterson2016, see also Chapters 12 and 13). A smaller body of critical literature has recognized the improvements made by the IPCC in diversifying author demographics, whilst also emphasising the still unequal representation within the IPCC’s authors and what needs to improve (Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021).

This chapter comprises three main sections. The first provides a detailed outline of the selection process for contributors to assessment reports, accounting for formal and informal practices. It asks whether these attempts to create a more diverse authorship have worked. The second section develops a critical account of diversity within the IPCC, asking in what ways diversity is important to the organisation in the first place. What are the prevailing logics and justifications used to support increased diversity in the IPCC in relation to broader discussions on diversity in science/knowledge production? The third main section adopts a critical perspective on the implications of diversity for both the epistemic legitimacy of the IPCC and its continued policy relevance. It offers capacity building – a process of developing the expertise and experience of both the individual and the organisation – as an important alternative to the prevailing substantive and institutional logics of the IPCC.

7.2 Participant Selection

The institutional process of nominating and selecting experts across all author categories is elaborated in Appendix A, S.4.3 of the IPCC’s Principles for Governing IPCC Work (IPCC, 2013a). Once the scoping of a new assessment report has been completed and the outline and structure decided, the IPCC Secretariat sends an open call for experts to all IPCC national focal points (NFP) and observer organisations (OO). NFP are national bodies that are responsible for disseminating the call among appropriate research networks. Interested experts then provide their motivation and curricula vitae to their respective NFP or OO who then – compliant with their own specific procedures – transmit the applications to the appropriate Working Groups (WGs)/Technical Support Units (TSUs). The extent to which NFPs conduct their own national selection, or transmit all applications directly to the IPCC, varies from country to country. This can be a site of political conflict. For example, different national institutions may lay claims to possessing authoritative climate expertise (private/public, energy/environment, university/government institute, and so on). In some cases questions may also arise about whether national experts are likely to align or not with government policy (Gustafsson & Lidskog, Reference Gustafsson and Lidskog2018a, discuss this process in the context of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), but the principle remains the same).

The co-chairs of each Working Group, with the TSU’s support, then select authors to fill the chapter writing teams. These include Coordinating Lead Authors (CLAs) with responsibility for managing contributions, Lead Authors (LAs) who draft contributions, and Review Editors (REs) who assess the quality of the process, ensuring inclusivity and appropriate responses to all review comments. The first criteria for selection are substantive and epistemic – appropriately knowledgeable experts must be identified to cover the topics required, ranging, for example, from ‘the Changing State of the Climate System’ to ‘Climate Resilient Development Pathways’. Each WG co-chair and TSU has their own way of identifying experts, but each must consider the criteria laid out in the Principles. These aim to reflect:

• the range of scientific, technical and socio-economic views and expertise;

• geographical representation (ensuring appropriate representation of experts from developing and developed countries and countries with economies in transition); there should be at least one, and normally two or more, from developing countries;

• a mixture of experts with and without previous experience in IPCC;

• gender balance.

Recent studies have helped to shed light on the active role that TSUs and OOs play in ‘filling in gaps’ within chapter teams with experts from groups – typically women and experts from the Global South (Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021: 9–11) – who might otherwise be marginalised or underrepresented in a competitive assessment process. The IPCC reports that, for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), a total of 831 experts were selected from 3,598 national and observer nominations (a 23 per cent success rate); for AR6, the figures were 721 experts from 2,858 (a 25 per cent success rate). The availability of these statistics is welcome. Nevertheless, a significant opacity remains in the IPCC’s selection processes. It is difficult to understand the significance of the interplay between the formal institutional procedures for expert selection – including the leeway that they allow – and the informal practices – including the impact of national pre-selection procedures – that contribute to the final author teams.

Recent scholarship has shown that the diversity of chapter writing teams has improved over time across the dimensions of gender (IPCC, 2019b) and geographic distribution (Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021). But some significant caveats must be added to this assessment for a more accurate picture to emerge. The following discussion focuses exclusively on the issues of gender and geographical distribution; Chapter 8 focuses in more detail on questions relating to previous experience in IPCC, and Chapter 12 on disciplinary contributions.

Trends towards securing more diverse author groups started from an extremely low baseline, with AR1 (1990) overwhelmingly dominated by male authors from North America and Western Europe. While there have been improvements in female representation, women remain a minority within author groups – as well as within categories of authors with more responsibilities within chapters (Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021). This situation looks even worse when it is considered how and where different categories intersect. Barriers to representation for women from the Global South, or for those for whom English is not a native language, are higher still. Their participation in the IPCC is even more difficult (Gay-Antaki & Liverman, Reference Gay-Antaki and Liverman2018; Gay-Antaki, Reference Gay-Antaki2021).

Second, as seen both in Figure 7.1 and in previous research (Ho-Lem et al., Reference Ho-Lem, Zerriffi and Kandlikar2011; Corbera et al., Reference Corbera, Calvet-Mir, Hughes and Paterson2016; Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021), the involvement of authors from the Global South – representing three quarters of the world’s population – account for a little over a third of the authors selected to contribute to IPCC assessment reports (El-Hinnawi, Reference El-Hinnawi2011). The proportion has improved since the first assessment cycle, which can be attributed to a number of factors. These include a more active geopolitical lobbying for representation from countries such as Brazil, China and India,² as well as the rapid development of scientific infrastructures, not least aided by the IPCC’s own capacity-building efforts (Chapter 8). In the broadest terms, the proportion of participants from developing countries has increased, but the gains are more modest when looking at the poorest countries alone. Those countries designated by the World Bank as low or lower-middle income economies account for only 14 per cent of authors in the most recent assessment cycle.

Figure 7.1 Proportion of IPCC authors from Global South countries, across the six assessment cycles (AR1 to AR6) and according to different Working Groups.

Source: data from Kari De Pryck (cf. Venturini et al., Reference Venturini, De Pryck and Ackland2022) and the author’s own

7.3 The Importance of Diversity

The IPCC’s approach to diversity and expertise emerges from an organisational structure and role that is geared towards providing a comprehensive knowledge base for international negotiations, agreements and treaties. Valuing epistemic neutrality/objectivity (‘policy relevant not policy prescriptive’) and consensus, the IPCC has been described on multiple occasions as ‘providing the view from nowhere’ (Borie et al., Reference Bony, Stevens, Held, Asrar and Hurrell2021). This ‘science-driven’ perspective of climate knowledge gives pre-eminence to universalistic perspectives on the nature of climate problems. Within such an epistemic framework, questions of diversity – of representation, experience and voice – are relegated as secondary concerns. Within the IPCC, this philosophy is most prominently visible in the way that, until recently, WGI has lagged well behind WGII and WGIII in terms of the representation of a range of identities (see Figure 7.1; also IPCC, 2019b; Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021). This is also the case with regards to the integration of different disciplinary and epistemic contributions (Ford et al., Reference Ford, Vanderbilt and Berrang-Ford2012; Stern & Dietz, Reference Stern and Dietz2015). A blindness, or strategic ignorance, to questions of identity and diversity helps to reproduce dominant attitudes and assumptions about how science is produced and who produces it. Recently, Miriam Gay-Antaki (Reference Gay-Antaki2021: 4) has asked, ‘what does a climate scientist look like?’ On the IPCC’s author database, for example, the placeholder avatar (Figure 7.2) for authors who have not provided a photograph is a greyed out yet clearly indicative image of how experts are typically perceived – male and white.

Figure 7.2 Placeholder avatar from the IPCC author database.

Source: IPCC website

Debates within the wider research community have challenged the strong separation between independent and objective facts on the one hand, and values and subjective interpretation on the other – both for pure science and for science for decision-making (e.g. Funtowicz & Ravetz, Reference Funtowicz and Ravetz1993; Jasanoff, Reference Jasanoff2005). In this case, diversity is not simply to be considered an additional concern, intended to complement substantive or cognitive expertise. Rather, the argument is that ‘[a] more representative workforce is more likely to pursue questions and problems that go beyond the narrow slice of humanity that much of science … is currently set up to serve’ (Anon, Reference Anon2018). With an issue such as climate change, in which the effects are likely to be severe but unevenly distributed both within and between countries (Hulme et al., Reference Hulme, Lidskog, White and Standring2020), and in which existing power structures are likely to obscure this unevenness, diversity of expertise is all the more necessary.

The IPCC is not a purely scientific organisation. As a science–policy interface it inhabits (and constructs) the boundary between the spheres of science and policy (Beck & Mahony, Reference Beck and Mahony2018a). On the international policy stage, representation is extremely important for organisational legitimacy and to evade a critique of imposing a particular Western/Global North vision of science, knowledge and climate problems – a view expressed by a number of Global South participants (Biermann, Reference Biermann2001; Lahsen, Reference Lahsen2009). In a telling quote (reported in Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021), one contributor to the IPCC concludes

The legitimacy and authority of the IPCC’s outputs and its impact on global policy should therefore be considered as much a consequence of the acceptance of the reports by national governments (see Chapter 20) as it is because of the accuracy and quality of the knowledge that is synthesised and communicated. At least part of the willingness to accept the report is the belief that a range of views, particularly those of the Global South, are being represented within the body of expertise making up the IPCC.

Two particular logics of diversity within the IPCC emerge from this picture. On the one hand, the substantive view of expertise acknowledges the contextual nature of scientific and social scientific knowledge. It understands that by adding a more diverse set of perspectives, experience and values, new and innovative ways of both viewing problems and developing solutions may emerge. On the other hand, an instrumental or strategic view of expertise focuses instead on the internal or external legitimacy that diversity bestows on both the institution and the products it produces. In this respect, diversity is primarily viewed as a goal for increasing institutional credibility (Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021).

7.4 Consequences of Diversity

When instrumental logics of diversity become institutionalised at an organisational level, the quest for diversity risks becoming an exercise in box-ticking. The measures of diversity – parity for marginalised group identities – become simply a target, divorced from broader social, cultural or epistemic concerns that diversity addresses (Ahmed, Reference Ahmed2012). As shown in the previous sections, the IPCC’s formal selection criteria comprise features such as gender, geographical location and experience, which can be easily operationalised and measured. But as Corbera and colleagues (2016) show in their analysis of WGIII authorship patterns, such an exercise leads to a reductive view of diversity as well as to practices of ‘gaming the system’. Authors ostensibly from the Global South are frequently products of academic and professional networks firmly grounded in the Global North, limiting true representation.

Box-ticking exercises can also limit or obscure the importance of addressing aspects of diversity that are less easy to measure, such as epistemic or viewpoint diversity. Ongoing debates about the disciplinary breadth of the IPCC (Stern & Dietz, Reference Stern and Dietz2015) have helped draw attention to the necessity and the value of inputs from a range of social scientific academic disciplines such as sociology, human geography, urban studies and economics (Corbera et al., Reference Corbera, Calvet-Mir, Hughes and Paterson2016; see Chapter 12). Yet these studies often fail to address questions about the extent to which those participating in the IPCC share similar ontological or epistemological approaches to the climate issue – for example, the unity/divisibility of the human and natural is one such issue – let alone questions of methodological approaches such as quantitative versus qualitative research methods. Additionally, the extent to which critical voices within the IPCC – critical of the range of expertise that ‘counts’, as well as critical of the formal role of the organisation as a non-prescriptive intergovernmental body – are given space to raise their concerns remains limited. The communication of expert consensus remains a priority (Pearce et al., Reference Pearce, Grundmann, Hulme, Raman, Kershaw and Tsouvalis2017a; see Chapter 26). These are organisational critiques that have been absorbed to some extent by subsequent science–policy interfaces, such as IPBES, which integrate expert diversity and disagreement more openly within their practices (Borie et al., Reference Bony, Stevens, Held, Asrar and Hurrell2021).

One means of transcending the binary logics of diversity in the IPCC – and even using the informal/formal processes to subvert them – is to situate diversity of expertise within the concept of capacity building. Diversity of experience, viewpoint and voice strengthens the institution and empowers the individual. For this reason, co-chairs and members of the TSU have pointed to the ways in which they use the selection of IPCC authors to develop the networks and capacity of experts from more marginalised groups. As one of them reports (Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021: 12), ‘even if people don’t start out with the highest scientific qualifications or publications record it may help them to bring them into the process by doing it. So, I think the capacity building element of it shouldn’t be ignored’. This process of building networks, peer support and development, and introducing a more diverse group of expertise, is something that occurs regularly, but outside of the formal rules and procedures of the IPCC (Gay-Antaki & Liverman, Reference Gay-Antaki and Liverman2018). This capacity building constitutes a particularly gendered form of labour – falling disproportionately on already marginalised groups who must use resources for self-organisation – that goes unrecognised and unrewarded at the organisational level despite offering significant institutional benefits.

7.5 Achievements and Challenges

Diversity of expertise within the IPCC has improved remarkably since AR1 was published in 1990, reflecting broader changes in societal norms and expectations. The question of diversity has been written into the formal processes of the IPCC, which now seek to ensure that a representative and balanced range of authors are selected according to gender, geographical distribution and experience. In practice, however, authors from countries in the Global South and female authors are still in a minority and the dominance of a few countries – and relatively few institutions within those countries – remains strong. Equally difficult to ensure is that a diverse set of disciplines, epistemic positions and viewpoints are represented and that they are provided with the skills and space with which to make a contribution. The 2019 Report from the IPCC Gender Task Force makes a number of concrete suggestions to improve diversity. These include regular monitoring and reporting, increasing the share of women in leadership roles, providing training on inclusive practices, and increased sensitivity to the barriers that travel imposes (Liverman et al., Reference Liverman, von Hedemann and Nying’uro2022).

The legitimacy and authority of the IPCC rests not solely on its capacity to produce relevant knowledge in the area of climate change. It rests also on its ability to do so in a way that makes all signatory countries feel represented by the published outcomes. This is indicative of a tension that emerges in all processes of knowledge production, but which are especially evident within those bodies, such as the IPCC, that bridge the science–policy interface: how are calls for objective, reliable and reproducible scientific knowledge integrated with a demand for greater diversity and representation? In practice, the commitment to diversity is often reduced to a box-ticking exercise in which the benefits of diversity are left unreflected upon in favour of numerical targets or quotas.

One way to transcend this problem is to recognize that these goals are not necessarily mutually contradictory but are, rather, a product of particular social demands for ‘relevant knowledge’. As has been increasingly acknowledged, the global framing of climate change is no longer sufficient to understand the uneven and divergent responsibilities, impacts and capacities to respond to climate risks. Diversity of experience and voice – including those with different disciplinary, epistemic and value commitments – is more necessary than ever to understand climate change. The IPCC faces the challenge of responding to this need.

Overview

This chapter argues that Early Career Researchers (ECRs) can contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in two major ways. First, ECRs can contribute unique skills and competences to the assessment process. Second, ECRs can share the workload with senior researchers and thus enhance the quality of the assessment. By reviewing the IPCC’s Scholarship Programme and the role of Chapter Scientists, this chapter explores the potentials and challenges of introducing ECRs into the IPCC, and for the Panel to engage in capacity-building to enhance the quality of the assessment. The review shows how the organisational set-up of the Scholarship Programme and the Chapter Scientist role allows the IPCC to informally engage in capacity-building without diverting from its mandate that does not include capacity-building. Even so, ECRs remains an untapped source of expertise that, through active and strategic work, can contribute to the future development of the IPCC.

8.1 Introduction

A key strategy the IPCC uses to ensure its credibility is to enrol world-leading researchers to assess the current state of knowledge about climate change (Hoppe, Reference Hoppe1999; Beck, Reference Beck2011a; IPCC, 2021b). To become relevant and legitimate, when selecting those who are to work on its assessments, the IPCC has complemented its requirement for credentialled experts with additional criteria that encourage diversity with respect to disciplines, gender, ethnicity, language and geographical representation (see Chapter 7). Even without engaging in a discussion about the extent to which this move has been successful, these strategies come across as having a rather short-term focus on how to make IPCC assessments credible, relevant and legitimate here and now. To continue to develop as an institution, however, the IPCC also needs to consider longer-term strategies, including capacity-building and succession planning for future IPCC assessments. Although the selection criteria ‘to create a mixture of experts with and without previous experience in the IPCC’ could be seen as a plan to create continuity between assessments, capacity-building remains outside the IPCC’s formal mandate. Even so, this chapter will show how the IPCC indirectly engages in capacity-building by supporting ECRs and introducing them to the assessment process. Such a move prepares the IPCC to become an expert organisation for both the present and the future (Chan et al., Reference Chan, Carraro, Edenhofer, Kolstad and Stavins2016; Gustafsson & Berg, Reference Gustafsson and Berg2020; Gustafsson, Reference Gustafsson2021).

The chapter reviews the potential, and the limitations and challenges, of engaging ECRs in the IPCC to enhance the quality of the assessments and to bring new perspectives to the assessment process. This will be done by looking at the IPCC’s Scholarship Programme, which supports ECRs from developing countries through their academic studies, and by exploring how and why ECRs are enrolled as Chapter Scientists in IPCC assessments. Previous research on ECRs in the IPCC is, with a few exceptions, still rather sparse. Thus, this chapter will combine a review of existing studies on the topic with an empirical survey of where to find ECRs in IPCC.

8.2 Defining and Finding ECR in IPCC

The concept Early Career Researcher (ECR) refers, as the phrase implies, to a researcher at the beginning of their career. The concept lacks a universal definition and is instead defined through the empirical context in which it is used: for example, through guidelines of eligibility to fellowship programmes, jobs, and calls for research funding. ECR could refer to anyone from postgraduate research students up to researchers 7 or even 10 years post-PhD (e.g. Bazeley, Reference Barry, Born and Weszkalnys2003; Gustafsson, Reference Gustafsson2018; ERC, 2021).

Since 2009, the IPCC has supported ECRs through its Scholarship Programme in which ECRs are identified as postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers (IPCC, 2009a). Since the 6th Assessment cycle, ECRs have also officially been invited by the IPCC to participate in the assessments as ‘Chapter Scientists’ (see later for a description of this role). The open calls for Chapter Scientists have identified ECRs as researchers with a Master’s degree or PhD, but who are still in the early stages of their academic career. Someone who passes this early career stage is referred to as one who is ‘overqualified’ and experienced (Gustafsson & Berg, Reference Gustafsson and Berg2020). Before these two opportunities existed – the Scholarship Programme and Chapter Scientists – ECRs did not have a formally assigned position in the IPCC. Instead, prior to 2009, to be able to participate in the IPCC, ECRs had to compete for a position as Lead Author on the same terms as senior researchers, but with less academic work-life experience. Thus, participating in the IPCC as an ECR has been and still is very difficult, although not impossible or unheard of (Casado et al., Reference Casado, Gremion and Rosenbaum2019; Gulizia et al., Reference Gulizia, Langendijk and Huang-Lachmann2019; Søgaard Jørgensen et al., Reference Søgaard Jørgensen, Evoh and Gerhardinger2019). Similarly, the literature also offers only a few examples where ECRs – in these cases defined as Master’s students or early-stage PhD researchers – through special calls and invitations have participated in the IPCC review process, but generally with positive results (van der Veer et al., Reference van der Veer, Visser, Petersen and Janssen2014; Casado et al., Reference Casado, Gremion and Rosenbaum2019).

Previous studies raise two general arguments as to why ECRs have a contribution to make in organisations such as the IPCC. First, ECRs contribute unique skills and competence to the assessment process (Lim et al., Reference Lim, Lynch and Fernandez-Llamazares2017). The fact that these researchers are early in their careers results in them bringing unique knowledge and experiences of great value to the process (Packalen & Bhattacharya, Reference Packalen and Bhattacharya2015; Gustafsson et al., Reference Gustafsson, Berg, Lidskog and Löfmarck2019). This allows the ECR to approach issues with new ideas on how to collaborate successfully across disciplines, cultures and languages, as well as offer new perspectives on how to answer challenging questions (Kowarsch et al., Reference Kowarsch, Garardm and Riousset2016; Gustafsson & Berg, Reference Gustafsson and Berg2020). Second, ECRs are an overlooked group of competent researchers that, if included, could share the workload with the senior researchers and enhance the quality of the assessment (Gustafsson et al., Reference Gustafsson and Berg2020). Successfully contributing to global knowledge assessments requires skills and competencies to match the requirements and protocols of the assessment process. This needs to be learned by all new Lead Authors, regardless of their career stage. Studies have shown that, with appropriate guidance, ECRs can contribute to the assessment at the same level and quality as senior researchers (van der Veer et al., Reference van der Veer, Visser, Petersen and Janssen2014; Gustafsson Reference Gustafsson2018; Casado et al., Reference Casado, Gremion and Rosenbaum2019; Gustafsson, Reference Gustafsson2021).

In the following two sections, I take a closer look at the IPCC’s Scholarship Programme and the role of Chapter Scientist, to explore the potential of engaging ECRs in the IPCC to enhance the quality of its assessments.

8.3 IPCC’s Scholarship Programme

The IPCC’s need to build capacity among ECRs intersects with other issues that also affect its credibility, relevance and legitimacy (Gustafsson et al., Reference Gustafsson, Berg, Lidskog and Löfmarck2019). One such issue, which the IPCC has struggled with since its inception, is the representational bias favouring industrialised countries of the Global North (Agrawala, Reference Agrawala1998b; Ho-Lem et al., Reference Ho-Lem, Zerriffi and Kandlikar2011; Hughes & Paterson, Reference Hughes and Paterson2017; Standring & Lidskog, Reference Standring and Lidskog2021; see Chapter 7). After being awarded a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, the IPCC decided to address these intersecting challenges by creating a Scholarship Programme Trust Fund to support young postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers in climate change sciences from ‘developing countries’, especially ‘least developed countries’ (IPCC, 2009a). Although directed by the IPCC, the Scholarship Programme is organised outside of the IPCC’s mandate and runs in parallel to the assessment process. Although capacity-building is not in the IPCC’s mandate, the Scholarship Programme allows the IPCC to address the problem of geographical bias.

The Scholarship Fund is governed by a Science Board and a Board of Trustees. The Science Board is responsible for the Scholarship Programme’s selection process and for deciding which scientific knowledge gaps and capacity-building needs are to be prioritised in each round of the program. The Board of Trustees carries the responsibility for the affairs of the Scholarship Programme Trust Fund. The Board of Trustees also holds the responsibility to create further economic support to the Fund and to develop collaborations on the Scholarship Programme. Since its establishment, the Scholarship Fund has received several monetary gifts and the Scholarship Programme has created a long-lasting collaboration with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Cuomo Foundation and, most recently, with the AXA Research Fund.

The IPCC’s Scholarship Programme was launched in 2009 as a two-year program and has since had six admission rounds. These rounds have differed slightly with regard to the academic age and research interest with which ECRs are eligible to apply to the program. Still, all six calls have been aimed towards postgraduate students, and sometimes postdoctoral researchers, working on ‘research that advances the understanding of the scientific basis of risk of human induced climate change, its potential impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation’ (IPCC, 2009a: 3).

In total, 90 ECRs have been accepted onto the IPCC’s Scholarship Programme (IPCC, 2021c). Of this total, 33 were accepted in the sixth round. Fifty-five ECRs have participated in the Scholarship Programme supported by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, 25 by the Cuomo Foundation, 6 by the AXA Research Fund, and 4 by funds from the IPCC’s Scholarship Programme Trust Fund. One contributing factor to the low number of IPCC-supported scholars is that the Board of Trustees was inactive for almost three years after the first Board of Trustees’ mandate expired in 2016 and before a new Board was appointed in October 2018 (IPCC, 2018c). An additional challenge for the development of the Scholarship Programme has been administrative limitations within the IPCC’s secretariat to manage a larger programme (e.g. IPCC, 2012a; 2015b; 2016a). Despite strong appreciation, validation and support of the Scholarship Programme from the IPCC, the Programme’s organisation and management has therefore made it difficult – if not prohibited – to increase numbers of ECRs and to develop in other respects.

Three comments have recurred in the Panel’s discussions on how to develop the programme (e.g. IPCC, 2012a; 2016a; 2018d). First, is the desire to generate additional funds and collaborations. Second, is to follow up on the progress of the ECRs in the programme and explore the need of making the Scholarship longer to ensure that the students can finish their studies. Third, is to work on ways to connect the ECRs in the programme more closely with the IPCC’s work. However, it is not evident that these questions have resulted in any changes to or developments of the program up until 2018. In 2018, as part of the discussion on how to make closer ties between ECRs and the IPCC, the Panel reviewed whether funds from the Scholarship Programme Trust Fund could be used to cover travel costs and honoraria for Chapter Scientists from ‘developing countries’ (IPCC, 2018d). In subsequent discussions about this proposal, concerns were raised about potential negative consequences on the Scholarship Programme Trust Fund’s capacity to contribute economic support to graduate and postgraduate studies. The outcome of these extended discussions was that the Panel decided, in May 2019, that the IPCC’s Scholarship Programme Trust Fund could be used to support ‘developing country’ Chapter Scientists, but only if such use did not negatively impact the running of the Scholarship Programme (IPCC, 2019c).

When discussing the options of how the Scholarship Programme could be developed, an interesting comparison can be made with the Fellowship Programme in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (Gustafsson, Reference Gustafsson2021). In comparison to the IPCC, capacity-building is included in IPBES’s mandate and this has led to the development of a Fellowship Programme that allows ECRs to participate in IPBES’s assessment process in a role that equals that of a Lead Author. The IPBES Fellowship Programme also provides a mentorship structure and an annual capacity-building workshop that addresses both formal and informal skills that are needed in an assessment process like the ones of IPBES and IPCC (Gustafsson, Reference Gustafsson2018; Gustafsson et al., Reference Gustafsson, Berg, Lidskog and Löfmarck2019, Reference Gustafsson and Berg2020).

8.4 Chapter Scientists

During the assessment process for the IPCC’s AR5 Report, which was presented in 2014, the role of Chapter Scientist was officially introduced by the IPCC for the first time (Schulte-Uebbing et al., Reference Schulte-Uebbing, Hansen, Macaspac and Winter2015). The Chapter Scientists’ task is to aid and support the Coordinating Lead Authors (CLA) and Lead Authors (LA) throughout the assessment process to ease their workload. The introduction of Chapter Scientists was suggested and implemented as one of many measures that aimed to strengthen the IPCC’s quality control in the aftermath of the critique of AR4 (see Chapter 6). During the assessment cycle of AR6, the position of Chapter Scientist has been formalised by the IPCC Panel and decisions have been made to offer economic support to Chapter Scientists from ‘developing countries’, as discussed earlier (IPCC, 2019c, d). Before the introduction of Chapter Scientists, ECRs were recruited as research assistants outside of the IPCC’s formal structure by individual CLAs with financial means to do so. To some extent, these personal and informal initiatives by CLAs continue in parallel to the formal work of the Chapter Scientists to create additional administrative support.

Despite being a formal designation within the IPCC, the role of Chapter Scientist has not yet been standardised in the same way as the role of CLAs and LAs (Gustafsson & Berg, Reference Gustafsson and Berg2020). Chapter Scientists are not nominated by IPCC member states and so their recruitment, and working conditions, have varied greatly between and within the three Working Groups (WGs). In WGI and WGII, Chapter Scientists have been recruited and employed by individual CLAs in a similar fashion as in the previous informal recruitment process of research assistants. This has often resulted in the engagement of locally known ECRs who come to work in the same institution as a CLA in a ‘developed country’. WGIII, on the other hand, has engaged ECRs from ‘developing countries’ as Chapter Scientists through a general call administered by WGIII’s Technical Support Unit (TSU). The assignment has been performed on a voluntary basis and the ECRs have been expected to be able to work for up to 30 per cent of their time in the role. Thus, the Chapter Scientists in WGIII have not been known to the CLA in advance and they have not come to work in the same institution. Until 2019, when the IPCC decided to offer economic support to cover travel expenses for Chapter Scientists from ‘developing countries’ (see earlier discussion), WGIII made use of external donations to cover such costs for their Chapter Scientists.

Chapter Scientists contribute to the organisation in two main ways: by contributing to IPCC’s work on quality-control of current assessments in an assisting function; and by informally building capacity for future assessments as the ECRs gain inside experience of what it means to be an author in the IPCC. In addition to the value of Chapter Scientists’ administrative support to current assessments, it is also important to recognise that many of the Chapter Scientists have come to contribute to the assessments in more substantive ways. Taking the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (SR15) as an example, all Chapter Scientists ended up contributing qualitatively to the assessment in ways that enabled them to become recognized as Contributing Authors. Thus, in line with previous research discussed earlier, this example shows ECRs competence as an untapped pool of expertise that is relevant to the IPCC’s assessments (Gustafsson & Berg, Reference Gustafsson and Berg2020).

To work as a Chapter Scientist offers ECRs a unique stepping stone towards future IPCC engagement. This is by having the possibility to gain state-of-the-art knowledge in the field, unique insights into the IPCC assessment process, and to develop networks that could help future career development. In this respect, the IPCC contributes to informal capacity-building. However, due to the variations in working conditions and tasks among the Chapter Scientists (see Box 8.1), the capacity-building process that takes place through the role of the Chapter Scientist is very much an ad hoc process without promises of designated capacity-building goals and outcomes. Important to note is that the ad hoc character of this process, in combination with the hierarchical organisation of the IPCC, also makes the role of Chapter Scientist a potentially insecure position. The informal ways in which work is assigned to the Chapter Scientist by the CLA creates a situation in which the ECR, due to differences in power dynamics, risks being exploited and overworked with limited resources to object to or change their situation.

8.5 Achievements and Challenges

The IPCC Scholarship Programme has been running for more than ten years, supporting 90 ECRs. This is a significant achievement. However, the lack of attention paid to the Programme’s development raises questions about how it could be further enhanced through more active management. The Scholarship Programme has the potential to transform itself from being a passive activity that awards financial scholarships to ECRs to something more active. For example, taking inspiration from the IPBES Fellowship Programme, the IPCC Scholarship Programme could ensure closer and more regular contact between ECRs and the IPCC while the ECR completes their studies, allowing the ECR to contribute to the development of the IPCC. Such an extension of the Scholarship Programme would require more administrative and economic resources.

The chapter has also shown how the role of Chapter Scientist has been introduced as a first attempt to formally make use of ECR’s capacities in current IPCC assessments. The role of Chapter Scientist offers a unique formal opportunity for ECRs to gain an insight into the IPCC’s assessment process, enhance their knowledge in the field of climate change research, and develop important professional networks. The role allows for informal capacity-building for the individual ECR, as well as enhancing the quality of current assessments. However, shaping the role of Chapter Scientist so as to be beneficial to both the IPCC and the ECR has been neither standardised nor monitored by the IPCC at an institutional level. The responsibility has been left with individual CLAs and ECRs, and becoming an IPCC Chapter Scientist therefore comes with potential challenges for the individual ECR.

This chapter has shown how ECRs are an untapped resource of expertise and competence that could contribute to the future development of the IPCC. However, unlocking this resource is not something that will happen by itself. Developing the IPCC’s inclusion of ECRs’ expertise to enhance their capacity – as well as that of the IPCC – will require active and strategic work. First, would be to create new entry points to the assessment process for ECRs. Second, would be to offer more guidance on the execution of tasks in the assessment assigned to ERCs. And third, would be to change the mandate of the IPCC’s assessment process to allow for capacity-building of ECRs; this would welcome and acknowledge their contribution to the IPCC of ECRs’ knowledge, ideas and perspectives.

Overview

This chapter explores the role of governments in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), how this is theorised, and how government participation in the organisation has changed over time. One of the most distinctive features of the IPCC is its intergovernmental character. While some scholars criticise government membership of the IPCC, many IPCC actors see this as key to ensuring the political relevance of the assessment. But what does government membership mean? What do member governments do in the organisation? And who are IPCC delegates and focal points? This chapter addresses these questions and identifies how member governments have deepened their involvement in the IPCC over time as their knowledge has grown and as the stakes in climate politics have risen. However, participation between countries remains uneven and the chapter explores how concerns about developing countries’ capacity to contribute has shaped the IPCC and assessments of climate change.

9.1 Introduction

The IPCC is composed of member governments that meet once or twice a year in plenary session. Membership to the Panel is open to all member countries of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and there are currently 195 member countries. However, of this number, only half regularly send representatives to plenary and about one quarter could be described as active participants (IPCC, 2009b). The Panel is involved at every stage of the IPCC’s assessment practice, which enables governments to have considerable influence over the organisation and its work. Although member governments are not directly involved in authoring the reports, they approve the report outline, nominate authors, elect the Bureau review draft reports, and accept and approve the final products, including the Summaries for Policymakers (SPM) (see Chapter 20). Financially, the IPCC is dependent on donations from governments, and all IPCC expenditure is agreed upon by the Panel, which gives governments the final decision over the organisation’s continuation, its assessment activities, and the expert meetings and workshops that inform these.

In this chapter, I explore how the role of governments in the IPCC is understood and theorised, and how government participation in the organisation and its assessment activities has changed over time. One of the distinctive features of the IPCC as a global environmental knowledge body is its intergovernmental character (Agrawala, Reference Agrawala1998a). While some scholars have been critical of government membership of the IPCC (Haas, Reference Haas2004), many actors within the organisation see this as a key feature for ensuring the policy relevance of the reports produced and their impact on government action. As a result, this model has been emulated in newly established global environmental assessment bodies, such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). I use the lenses of the ‘epistemic community’ model and the ‘boundary organisation’ (BO) concept to unpack how science and policy are intertwined in the IPCC. This approach illuminates the avenues member governments have open to them to influence the organisation and its assessment process. The chapter identifies how governments have deepened their involvement in the assessment practice of the IPCC, as their confidence in the organisation and its process has grown and as the stakes in climate politics have increased. I also highlight how asymmetries between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ country participation persist.

9.2 From Epistemic Community to Boundary Organisation

Two main perspectives informing the study of governments and the relationship between science and politics in the IPCC are the epistemic community model and the boundary organisation concept (Hughes, Reference Hughes2015; Lidskog & Sundqvist, Reference Lidskog and Sundqvist2015; Hughes & Paterson, Reference Hughes and Paterson2017). An epistemic community is defined as ‘a network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area’ (Haas, Reference Haas1992: 3). These transnational communities of scientists and other experts are said to play a critical role in helping states to identify their interests in complex and uncertain issue areas, framing them for collective debate, proposing specific policies and identifying salient points for negotiation (Haas, Reference Haas1992). This approach has been influential in exploring the establishment of the IPCC (Lunde, Reference Lunde1991; Boehmer-Christiansen, Reference Boehmer-Christiansen1994a,Reference Boehmer-Christiansenb; Paterson, Reference Paterson1996; Bernstein, Reference Bernstein2001; Newell, Reference Newell2006). Matthew Paterson (Reference Paterson1996: 144), for example, concluded that ‘the international development of climate as a political issue … can plausibly be interpreted in terms of the effect of the development of an epistemic community on the subject’ and that ‘in the IPCC we can see the epistemic community at its most organised’ (Paterson, Reference Paterson1996: 146).

Although the epistemic community model has been used to explain the origins of the IPCC and the politicisation of climate change, Peter Haas (Reference Haas2004) is sceptical of its applicability to the IPCC. He has been critical of the intergovernmental nature of the Panel, suggesting that it stifles the epistemic community’s ability to function as theorised. In fact, Haas considers the IPCC an attempt by governments to gain control over the scientists and the diplomatic process, which had ascended too quickly up the political agenda in the 1980s under the epistemic community’s influence (Haas & McCabe, Reference Haas and McCabe2001; Haas, Reference Haas2004). From this theoretical approach, science and politics are, and should remain, separate realms (Lidskog & Sundqvist, Reference Lidskog and Sundqvist2015).

The boundary organisation approach, on the other hand, takes the organised intertwining of science and politics in the production of scientific knowledge for political action as its starting point (Guston, Reference Guston2001). A BO is identified by its location between the distinct social worlds of politics and science, by the participation of actors from both sides, and by the distinct lines of accountability to each (Guston, Reference Guston2001: 399–400). From this perspective, relevant knowledge emerges from the productive collaboration between the institutions of science and politics. Empirical studies informed by the BO concept highlight the importance of maintaining a distinction or a ‘boundary’ between science and politics during the production of assessments. They illuminate how this is achieved in practice through IPCC activities (Skodvin, Reference Skodvin2000b; Fogel, Reference Fogel2005; Gustafsson & Lidskog, Reference Gustafsson and Lidskog2018b) (see also Chapter 24 for the related idea of boundary objects). As the study of the IPCC has matured, ‘boundary organisation’ has emerged as the most important concept for characterising the nature of the IPCC, with the IPCC identified as ‘the preeminent boundary organisation on climate change’ (Adler & Hirsch Hadorn, Reference Adler and Hirsch Hadorn2014: 663; O’Neill et al., Reference O’Neill, Williams and Kurz2015: 380). From this perspective, the IPCC reflects in equal measure the scientisation of politics and the politicisation of science (Hoppe et al., Reference Hoppe, Wesselink and Cairns2013), but it is not considered tainted by its intergovernmental nature.

However, when the role of governments is explained, and their deepening involvement in the work of the IPCC and its assessment practice are documented, Haas’ criticism of government interference cannot be completely dismissed. Maintaining the distinctiveness and boundary between science and politics within the IPCC, either discursively or in knowledge products, has become increasingly difficult as the stakes in climate politics have risen (Beck & Mahony, Reference Beck and Mahony2018a; Livingston et al., Reference Livingstone2018; Livingston & Rummukainen, Reference Livingston and Rummukainen2020; De Pryck, Reference De Pryck2021a). The potential effect of IPCC reports on climate negotiations within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) means that governments invest at every stage of the assessment to control the potential ‘weight’ or effect of IPCC knowledge on global climate policymaking. This is most observable during the approval of the report’s key findings in the SPM (Hughes & Vadrot, Reference Hughes and Vadrot2019; see also Chapter 20). Furthermore, sometimes overlooked in this focus on the relationship between science and politics, is the asymmetries in participation between developed and developing countries. These asymmetries shape both the intergovernmental character of the organisation and assessment authorship. While there is a growing body of literature documenting the effects of this on the assessment reports (Hulme & Mahony, Reference Hulme and Mahony2010; Ho-lem et al., Reference Ho-Lem, Zerriffi and Kandlikar2011; Corbera et al., Reference Corbera, Calvet-Mir, Hughes and Paterson2016; Hughes & Paterson, Reference Hughes and Paterson2017), it is less well studied within member government relations (see Siebenhüner, Reference Siebenhüner2003; Hughes, Reference Hughes2015; Yamineva, Reference Yamineva2017).

9.3 Governments as Panel Members and Focal Points

Member governments effectively have two roles within the IPCC: the first, inward facing, as members of the Panel, and the second, nationally facing, as national focal points. Returning to the establishment of the IPCC allows us to examine how government participation in these roles has evolved and how the issue of developing country involvement has been addressed. The IPCC’s establishment in 1988 was led by a relatively small group of individuals identified as representatives of government, the parent organisations (WMO and UNEP), and prominent members of the international climate science community (see Chapter 2). The First Assessment Report (AR1) was originally envisioned as an exercise for a small group of core members, and although all WMO and UNEP members were invited to the IPCC’s first Panel session, only 30 countries sent delegates (IPCC, 1988).

However, the organisational leadership quickly realised it would need to increase developing country participation if the assessments were going to be recognised and accepted as global assessments of climate knowledge. As acknowledged by the first IPCC chair, Bert Bolin, in the oft-cited quote: ‘Right now, many countries, especially developing countries, simply do not trust assessments in which their scientists and policymakers have not participated. Don’t you think global credibility demands global representation?’ (Schneider, Reference Schneider1991: 25). To address this, a Trust Fund was established to financially support one representative from each of the developing countries and countries with economies in transition to attend plenary meetings of the Panel and for appointed experts to attend author meetings (Agrawala, Reference Agrawala1998b). The issue over developing country involvement, however, was not solved with the establishment of this fund. It would become a defining feature of the IPCC’s work in the years ahead and an issue that remains on the organisational agenda today for reasons explored later.

The organisational distinction between government members of the Panel and scientific experts on the Bureau was also blurred in the early years of the IPCC. This is reflected, for example, in the principle that ‘to provide for the best possible coordination, the Chairmen and vice-Chairmen of the Working Groups (WGs) should be, where possible, Principal Delegates of their respective countries in [the] IPCC’ (IPCC, 1988: 6). From the perspective of some of the founding members, this blurring between Bureau and Panel actors was a unique feature of the IPCC and one that enabled ‘the harmonious resolution of difficult situations which arose in the work of the panel’ (Zillman, Reference Zillman2007: 877). Today, however, the Bureau and the Panel have more distinct memberships and tensions exist between Panel member governments and Bureau members. One of the most publicised incidents of this was the Bureau election in 2002, when incumbent IPCC chairman, Dr Robert Watson, was not re-elected for a second term in an election process that divided opinion within the Panel (Lawler, Reference Lawler2002; Zillman, Reference Zillman2007: 875).

This was the first time in the IPCC’s history that it was necessary for the Panel to take a vote on the position of chair. The two most cited reasons for this struggle highlight how political dynamics and developing country participation shape the organisation and its work. The first was that the USA – under the George W Bush administration – opposed Watson’s re-election because of his advocacy on climate action (McRight & Dunlap, Reference McCright and Dunlap2010: 120), and the second, was that it was necessary for the chairmanship to be held by a developing country member, after it had been held by two developed country experts for three assessment cycles (Bolin, Reference Begum, Lempert, Ali and Pörtner2007: 185–187). However, this struggle over Bureau elections also indicates how important Bureau membership is to governments, as evidenced by the pre-election manoeuvring that was revealed during AR5 by Wikileaks (Guardian, Reference Guardian2010a,Reference Guardianb,Reference Guardianc). Bureau membership can offer an important source of information to government delegates in position-taking on issues concerning the Panel. Countries with Bureau members may also attend Bureau meetings, which gives them further knowledge and insight into IPCC processes and may help them make authoritative interventions during decision-making and the approval of text.

In addition to being members of the Panel, government participants have an outward-facing role as national focal points. In this role, they act as conduits between the organisation, the national government and national scientific communities. The appointed focal point alerts the relevant community of scientists at the start of a report process, nominates authors, and coordinates national review processes for draft reports and input into other relevant IPCC documents and assessment activities (see Chapters 3 and 9). Governments’ capacities to invest and fulfil these activities, and thereby actively participate in and shape the process, provides further insight into the asymmetries between developed and developing country involvement and its effects.

9.4 Why Are Levels of Participation between Governments Unequal?

One of the reasons that the Trust Fund was unable to ‘solve’ the issue of developing country participation is because attending an IPCC panel meeting is not the same as being able to meaningfully participate (see Box 9.1). The differences between levels of involvement by governments in IPCC activities can be discerned by taking a closer look at what makes an authoritative Panel member. In order to be able to wield influence over the organisation and its assessment activities, it is essential to have knowledge of the process. This knowledge is attained over time and through investment and participation in the IPCC and through cultivating relations with the Bureau, Secretariat and other members of the Panel. This knowledge of the process translates into influence during plenary proceedings through informed interventions on the issue or text under discussion.

This investment in the IPCC is also a reflection of a government’s interest in the climate issue. At a national level, this could be identified as self-interest, with both a scientific and political dimension. On the science side, many developed countries have well-established, well-funded natural and social science communities producing knowledge on climate change. Members of this community are well represented in the authorship of the reports and in the knowledge assessed (Corbera et al., Reference Corbera, Calvet-Mir, Hughes and Paterson2016; Hughes & Paterson, Reference Hughes and Paterson2017). Focal points mobilise these communities during author nomination and expert review processes to ensure national representation and input in the assessment. On the politics side, governments are increasingly aware of the potential influence that IPCC assessments have on UNFCCC negotiations. They actively participate in appointment, review and approval processes to keep abreast of this knowledge and its potential impact on future climate policymaking.

Interest in Panel activities is, in part, conditional on being able to participate meaningfully, which at a national level requires having the economic resources to invest in the IPCC and, relatedly, the human resources to undertake membership activities. Without the time and resources to invest in commenting on draft outlines, initiating a search for national expertise, and undertaking a government review of draft reports, member governments as delegates are effectively excluded, or at least limited in their capacity, to meaningfully participate in IPCC proceedings. This is evident in the approval of SPMs, where informed position-taking on the technical framing of climate change requires the expert knowledge generated through the review process and/or housed within the national delegation.

Nationally, this also requires recognition of the impact that IPCC assessment findings have on climate negotiations and coordinating IPCC participation accordingly. For example, the location of the focal point is important to ensure coordination between IPCC and UNFCCC participation and to enable cross-departmental input into the government review of reports. However, the focal point is more commonly within the meteorological service in developing countries than in dedicated environment and/or climate change departments as in developed countries (from list of focal points, IPCC, n.d.(b)). Furthermore, if a different delegate is sent to every meeting, the lack of continuity prevents knowledge of the process and procedures and the cultivation of good relations with other Panel, Bureau and Secretariat members. It requires personal time commitment, and national recognition and support, to enable the same delegate to attend every meeting, undertake focal point duties, initiate review processes and coordinate with the national UNFCCC delegation. While the Trust Fund has enabled a stronger developing country presence, the resources available are insufficient to enable the full participation of all countries. The effect of this is that the capacity to influence the Panel reflects broader global distributions of economic resources and the political order that are tied to colonial legacies and histories of dispossession.

9.5 Achievements and Challenges

Within IPCC scholarship, knowledge of member governments’ role and participation within the organisation has been informed by the concepts of epistemic community and boundary organisation. The concept of boundary organisation illuminates the productive tensions between science and politics within the IPCC, which enables government members’ interests in climate change to inform and shape knowledge products and ensure their relevance, at least for the active participants of the IPCC. Over time, governments have become more autonomous actors within the organisation, although still dependent on the Bureau for realising the assessment. Furthermore, as the stakes in the climate issue and negotiations have risen, so has member government investment in IPCC activities. This has led to increased tension at key moments when science and politics are brought together, such as during Bureau elections and the approval of report outlines and key findings in the SPM text (see Chapter 20). Here, it is the epistemic community model that enables the questioning of whether, within the IPCC, the level of government involvement is creating usable knowledge for political action – or whether the intergovernmental process is being used to facilitate political delay.

Both the epistemic community model and the boundary organisation concept focus on the relation between science and politics. This can mask the unequal governmental capacity to shape the organisation and the direction and content of the IPCC’s assessment reports. While the establishment of the IPCC Trust Fund in the 1990s sought to facilitate developing country involvement, the economic and human resources required to conduct IPCC activities means that considerable asymmetries persist. Understanding these asymmetries, and reasons for their persistence, is an important area for future research.

Overview

This chapter discusses the role of NGO observers in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the extent to which they have access to and participate in the work of the Panel. Many UN institutions have arrangements for participation by NGOs and the IPCC is no exception. NGO observers include academic institutions, think tanks, civil society, indigenous peoples’ organisations, and business associations. They take part in IPCC meetings and nominate their representatives to serve as authors and reviewers in the preparation of assessment reports. NGO observers’ participation in the Panel is an important topic in light of the increasing emphasis on inclusiveness and diversity of views in science–policy interfaces and international institutions. The chapter also identifies related knowledge gaps and summarises the challenges and opportunities for enhanced NGO engagement in the IPCC.

10.1 Introduction

Recent international relations scholarship has shown that international institutions are transforming towards more open and inclusive participation by various stakeholders (Tallberg et al., Reference Tallberg, Sommerer, Squatrito and Jönsson2013; Bäckstrand, Reference Bäckstrand, Pattberg and Zelli2015). The role of stakeholders has also been discussed in relation to global environmental assessments (GEAs). For example, scholars have suggested that GEAs should better accommodate a pluralism of views and perspectives because environmental governance is conducted not only through state-centric models, but also in a polycentric fashion with the participation of sub-national actors, cities, civil society and private sector entities (Maas et al., Reference Maas, Montana and van der Hel2021). It has also been proposed that stakeholders’ involvement in GEAs helps with the following: (i) seeking diversity of information and viewpoints; (ii) improving communication of assessment findings; (iii) fostering dialogue and enabling learning among all actors; and (iv) building a sense of ownership over assessment reports (Garard & Kowarsch, Reference Garard and Kowarsch2017: 235). Indeed, inclusive participation and a better integration of diverse views have become a commonly accepted expectation, and even a requirement, for the design of science–policy interfaces.

The IPCC has special provisions for the participation of observer organisations. According to IPCC rules, observer organisations include: (i) participating organisations that are other UN bodies and organisations; (ii) intergovernmental organisations, for example the European Union (EU) or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); and (iii) non-governmental organisations. This chapter discusses the third category of IPCC observer organisations, that is NGO observers. Over a hundred of them have been registered to date with the IPCC. Despite the importance of NGO participation, surprisingly little is known about which NGOs participate in the Panel, and why, nor how they influence the process, if at all. IPCC scholarship has reflected a great deal on who participates in the assessment process, but this has mostly been concerned with scientists and governments. Few papers have analysed the role of observers (Garard & Kowarsch, Reference Garard and Kowarsch2017; Yamineva, Reference Yamineva2017).

This chapter briefly discusses the institutional arrangements for NGO access to the IPCC and the few research findings available on their participation in, and impact on, the IPCC’s affairs and preparation of assessment reports. The chapter also identifies related knowledge gaps, and assesses institutional achievements, challenges and ways to increase NGO stakeholder participation in the Panel.

10.2 NGO Access and Participation in the IPCC

Like other UN institutions, the IPCC has special provisions for the access of observer organisations including NGOs. National and international organisations can acquire the status of NGO observers, but they have to fulfil two requirements in order to participate – they have to be non-profit and they must be ‘qualified in matters covered by the IPCC’ (IPCC, 2006a). The second requirement implies that their work should relate to the IPCC mandate, which is, conducting assessments of scientific, technical and socio-economic information on various aspects of climate change (IPCC, 2013a).

Whether NGOs meet these requirements is assessed during the accreditation process. The access of NGOs that have already observer status with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is simplified. As a general rule, applications for observer status are screened by the IPCC Secretariat and considered by the Bureau before being presented to the Panel. Governments have a validating role with respect to the access of non-governmental stakeholders (Yamineva, Reference Yamineva2017), since the final decision on acceptance of an NGOs’ observer status is made by the governmental plenary by consensus. In addition, applications from national organisations are ‘brought to the attention’ of the relevant Panel’s member states (IPCC, 2006a). In principle, this implies that individual governments can block a national NGO accessing the IPCC, although so far this seems to have happened only once, when China conditioned accreditation of the Industrial Technology Research Institute from Taiwan on it being listed as from ‘Taiwan, Province of China’ (IPCC, 2009c).¹ As of July 2021, the Panel had 116 NGO observers of varying nature such as academic institutions, think tanks, civil society organisations and private sector associations (Table 10.1).

NGOs’ access to IPCC meetings is limited to attendance of Panel and Working Group plenary meetings, but without the right to intervene or introduce proposals. With respect to interventions, the recent institutional practice has been to give observers an opportunity to take the floor, but only if no government delegation is asking for it. In making an intervention from the floor, observers cannot support a government’s intervention. The right to attend IPCC meetings does not extend to informal consultations, Lead Author Meetings, workshops or expert meetings. Experts from NGOs may, however, be invited by the IPCC Secretariat to participate in expert meetings and workshops.

In addition to meeting attendance, NGOs can nominate their experts to participate in the assessment of the literature as IPCC Lead/Contributing Authors and as reviewers of draft reports. Providing comments at the review stage has been an important channel for observers to contribute to the preparation of reports, for example through highlighting the literature which may have fallen outside of Lead Authors’ attention (Yamineva, Reference Yamineva2017: 248). In all these cases, such experts act ‘in their own right’ (IPCC, 2006a) and not as representatives of their organisations. They are therefore deprived of the right to represent the perspectives and concerns of their constituencies. With such limited access, NGOs often turn to informal means of influencing the IPCC process, especially at the crucial stage of SPM approval, for example through informal interactions in the corridors of meeting venues (see Chapter 4). Some countries also include NGO representatives as members of their national delegations, providing them, indirectly, with expanded participation rights.

Observer organisations may also be invited to submit their views on general IPCC governance issues or matters related to the assessment process, such as the IPCC scoping meetings (see Chapter 5). In such cases, NGO engagement remains at the discretion of the IPCC management and is not mandated by the Panel’s policies. Yet, in recent years, the institutional practice has been to seek input from observer organisations. For example, the task group on the future work of the Panel – which operated between 2018 and 2020 – worked on the basis of extended participation by observer organisations with the right to introduce proposals (IPCC, 2018e). That said, only two civil society organisations – Climate Action Network International and the Friends World Committee for Consultation – submitted their views to support the work of this task group (IPCC, 2019e).

10.3 Evaluating NGO Engagement in the IPCC

Literature has suggested distinguishing between access to, and participation in, international institutions. While access concerns formal rules and informal practices allowing for the participation of specific actors, participation is the realisation of those access rights, or actual contribution by those actors (Tallberg et al., Reference Tallberg, Sommerer, Squatrito and Jönsson2013: 8). This distinction is helpful in assessing the de facto role of stakeholders in international arenas because inclusive access does not necessarily lead to participation (Yamineva, Reference Yamineva2017). It is not certain how many of the accredited observer organisations contribute actively to the work of the IPCC: based on analysis of formal documentation, few of them seem to have taken part in the work concerning governance issues.

Access can also be analysed in terms of depth – level of involvement – and the range of actors – can all stakeholders participate or only some of them according to certain criteria? (Tallberg et al., Reference Tallberg, Sommerer, Squatrito and Jönsson2013: 8). Accordingly, ‘high’ access means deep involvement of a broad spectrum of stakeholders on a permanent basis and is difficult to revoke. ‘Low’ access on the other hand implies shallow involvement extending to a narrow subset of stakeholders (Tallberg et al., Reference Tallberg, Sommerer, Squatrito and Jönsson2013: 28). Low access is also temporary and can easily be revoked. From this perspective, access of observers to the IPCC can be assessed as ‘low’ because it is shallow, validated by governments, and extends only to a narrow group of stakeholders. The restricted access of non-governmental stakeholders to the IPCC can partly explain some of the challenges faced by the Panel. These would include the limited diversity of perspectives (see Chapter 7) and the exclusion of non-scientific insights from the assessment reports – for example those of local and indigenous knowledge holders (Ford et al., Reference Ford, Vanderbilt and Berrang-Ford2012: 81; Obermeister, Reference Obermeister2017; see also Chapter 13) – and practitioner’s expertise (Viner & Howarth, Reference Viner and Howarth2014).

The IPCC therefore follows a functionalist approach to the participation of NGOs. This approach – which is prevalent in the UN system – views NGO engagement from the perspective of whether they help advance institutional goals (von Bernstorff, Reference von Bernstorff2021: 135–140). From this viewpoint, NGOs are to be involved in the IPCC assessment processes only to the extent that they can contribute relevant expertise for the provision of robust, scientifically credible assessment products. The functionalist approach stands in contrast to a model of NGO engagement viewed through the prism of democratising international institutions (von Bernstorff, Reference von Bernstorff2021: 141–143). The idea of deliberative interest representation is reflected in the recent expansion of multi-stakeholder forums across international arenas and a stronger focus on the participation of communities who are negatively affected by international policy and rule-making, for example, small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples.

Overall, governments and scientists have been uneasy about NGO participation in the IPCC. In the early years, this was because of fears that climate sceptic organisations would disrupt the work of the Panel. Indeed, there are accounts of how the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) – a once prominent US-based industry lobbyist group with climate contrarian views – attempted to water down previous IPCC reports (Edwards & Schneider, Reference Edwards and Schneider1997; Franz, Reference Franz1998; Lahsen, Reference Lahsen and Marcus1999). The introduction of the IPCC Policy and Process for Admitting Observer Organisations in 2006 was partly due to the desire to shield the Panel from organisations which could undermine its work (e.g. Gutiérrez et al., Reference Gutiérrez, Johnson, Kulovesi, Muñoz and Schipper2007: 13).

Involvement of experts from the private sector and civil society organisations in the IPCC assessments remains controversial. The Panel was, for example, criticised for the participation of a Greenpeace employee as a Lead Author for the 2011 Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. In the view of critics, this led to the endorsement by the IPCC of a high renewables’ deployment scenario, one that was also supported by Greenpeace (Anon, Reference Anon2011; Edenhofer, Reference Edenhofer2011; Lynas, Reference Lynas2011). In another example, the nomination of two senior employees from major oil companies – ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco – as authors for the 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C prompted wide criticism by civil society organisations and accusations of a conflict of interest (ETC Group, 2017).

The Panel’s cautious sentiments towards NGOs remain today and some nations continue to warn the IPCC ‘against elevating NGOs and special interest organisations to the same level as governments’ (Gutiérrez et al., Reference Gutiérrez, Kosolapova, Kulovesi and Yamineva2012: 8). As evidence of this, governments recently lacked enthusiasm to involve stakeholders in the AR6 pre-scoping activities (Allan et al., Reference Allan, Gutiérrez and Bhandari2016). Expanding stakeholder engagement in government-led bodies is indeed problematic and not only in the IPCC – the same challenges have been reported for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (Beck et al., Reference Beck, Borie and Chilvers2014). Such expansion does not only entail renegotiating the Panel’s balance of power, but is also viewed by some governments – and by some scientists – as potentially decreasing the scientific robustness and credibility of assessment findings (Yamineva, Reference Yamineva2017).

10.4 Knowledge Gaps

Studies of the participation of observers in the IPCC are somewhat lacking in the academic literature. Despite the number of admitted observer organisations, very few of these NGOs seem to actively contribute to the work of the IPCC. Contribution and impact of experts from NGOs in the preparation of assessment reports is also unclear. Further, NGO participation can be non-transparent and difficult to trace when it takes place informally in the corridors of meeting venues or when NGO representatives contribute to the process as members of national delegations.

Future work could shed light on the role of civil society and business associations in the IPCC, in particular the role of NGO-nominated experts in the assessment as Lead Authors and in review processes. Stepping outside of institutional boundaries, it would be interesting to know how NGOs engage with the IPCC assessment products and findings, helping in their communication and framing discourses around climate policy solutions. Similarly, NGOs sometimes exercise considerable influence in national contexts and may shape IPCC member states’ attitudes towards the IPCC and its assessment findings (Franz, Reference Franz1998; see Chapter 23).

10.5 Achievements and Challenges

NGO engagement in the IPCC has evolved towards a more structured input through the adoption of specific institutional policies and higher numbers of organisations admitted as observers. It is doubtful that the Panel would reform its institutional arrangements in the future to allow a significant expansion of NGO access to the assessment process, since this would likely face opposition by its member states. Many additional challenges to engaging non-governmental, non-scientific actors in GEAs are discussed in the literature. For instance, some scholars have pointed out that such a move would risk reducing the scientific credibility of IPCC reports (Garard & Kowarsch, Reference Garard and Kowarsch2017). Furthermore, NGO participation in international institutions is not necessarily unproblematic because of the dominance of the Global North NGOs and private sector lobbyism (von Bernstorff, Reference von Bernstorff2021: 143–147; also Sénit et al., Reference Sénit, Biermann and Kalfagianni2017). And there are also costs and other resource implications arising from significant reforms of the IPCC institutional design (Garard & Kowarsch, Reference Garard and Kowarsch2017).

At the same time, despite these challenges, the turn towards solutions in global climate policy discourse arguably suggests expanding the knowledge base of the IPCC assessments. Part of this could be reconsidering the role of NGO observers as potential holders of solutions-oriented knowledge(s). Expanding NGO participation might also address some of the challenges faced by the IPCC – as discussed in other chapters of the book – such as the legitimacy of IPCC findings (see Chapter 6), transparency and representativeness in modelling and scenario development (see Chapter 15), and inclusion of traditional forms of knowledge (see Chapter 13). What form such broadening of NGO participation should take is not self-evident – academic literature and policy practice does not provide straightforward answers. From the perspective of enhancing the democratic legitimacy of GEAs, some scholars have discussed creating a multi-stakeholder advisory body to coordinate stakeholder engagement and develop adaptive practices (Garard & Kowarsch, Reference Garard and Kowarsch2017). Other, more radical, suggestions include establishing ‘deliberative mini-publics’ consisting of randomly selected people from around the world to inform deliberations in GEAs (Maas et al., Reference Maas, Montana and van der Hel2021). However, in the context of the IPCC, such ideas are unlikely to find support among governments and scientists. The experience of the IPBES also shows that striving for diversity and inclusiveness in science-for-policy institutions is challenging in the context of intergovernmentalism and consensus-seeking decision-making (Beck et al., Reference Beck, Borie and Chilvers2014; Díaz-Reviriego et al., Reference Díaz, Settele and Brondizio2019).

A more realistic institutional format for expanding NGO participation in the IPCC would be establishing task groups composed of representatives of stakeholder constituencies – civil society, private sector and indigenous peoples (Yamineva, Reference Yamineva2017; also Ford et al., Reference Ford, Cameron and Rubis2016) – that would advise the IPCC Bureau. This would allow for a consolidated and more representative input by NGOs on a continuous basis, while at the same time maintaining an institutional boundary between the scientific assessment process and participation by NGO observers. Establishing specific institutional arrangements for NGO contribution would also bring more transparency and accountability concerning their participation, as well as help the IPCC navigate the solutions-oriented knowledge landscape.

Overview

Despite many flaws, including variable quality and a lack of universal standards, peer review – the formal process of critically assessing knowledge claims prior to publication – remains a bedrock norm of science. It therefore also underlies the scientific authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (IPCC). Most literature used in IPCC assessments has already been peer reviewed by scientific journals. IPCC assessments are themselves reviewed at multiple stages of composition, first by Lead Authors (LAs), then by scientific experts and non-governmental organisations outside the IPCC, and finally by government representatives. Over time, assessment review has become increasingly inclusive and transparent: anyone who claims expertise may participate in review, and all comments and responses are published after the assessment cycle concludes. IPCC authors are required to respond to all comments. The IPCC review process is the most extensive, open and inclusive in the history of science. Challenges include how to manage a huge and ever-increasing number of review comments, and how to deal responsibly with review comments that dispute the fundamental framing of major issues.

11.1 Introduction

The IPCC’s claim to scientific authority is heavily based on the multiple levels of peer review applied in its assessments. Peer review practices date to the 1730s, if not even earlier (Spier, Reference Spier2002). They are a deeply entrenched norm, based in the fundamental scientific principles of communal knowledge production and methodological scepticism. When the IPCC was established in 1988, journal review systems had acquired a stable form, which remains prevalent today. Scientists submit articles to journals. Journal editors then locate referees, who write reviews detailing errors, methodological issues or other problems and recommend either rejection, revision or acceptance. The most common recommendation is to revise and resubmit. If the referees and editor agree that the revisions respond adequately to their comments, the paper is accepted.

Scholars have studied peer review systems for decades. Studies have unearthed problems ranging from failure to catch obvious mistakes to favouritism (‘pal review’) to outright fraud (Chubin & Hackett, Reference Chubin and Hackett1990; Moran, Reference Moran1998). It’s a messy and imperfect process – and in practice there are few, if any, universal standards. Both referees and editors face time and expertise constraints, which lead to widely varying levels of investment in the process. Different journals require double-blind (neither referees nor authors know each other’s names), single-blind (referees know the authors’ names, but not vice versa), signed or optionally signed reviews. Many journals require referees to answer specific questions or fill out rating scales, but these are weak checks on an inherently qualitative process. In practice, reviews run the gamut from brief, pro forma recommendations to multi-page deep dives into methods, mathematics and supporting or conflicting literature.

A key weakness: unlike auditors in banking and corporate finance, peer reviewers rarely attempt to replicate or test any part of a study (McIntyre & McKitrick, Reference McIntyre and McKitrick2005). They rely instead on their expert knowledge, and they assume the good faith and honesty of authors. This honour system has led to scandals in some fields when formal replication studies have disconfirmed results previously held as fundamental (Baker, Reference Baker2015).

11.2 Who Counts as a Peer?

In journal review systems, ‘peers’ are generally understood to be experts in the same or closely related fields. Editors’ choice of peers can influence publication decisions. Yet while the occasional arbitrary exercise of editorial power is real, a much more common issue is that finding arm’s-length peers is not easy. Given the limits of their own knowledge, editors must sometimes (perhaps often) draw on lists of potential referees submitted by authors themselves, and they lack objective means to learn about authors’ personal connections to those referees. Further, the best-qualified referees are often in high demand and unavailable. In such cases, editors may seek referees at some remove from the specific focus area, or rely on more-available junior scholars. In both cases, reviewers’ expertise may be insufficient to detect key problems.

Starting in the 1990s, Internet-based publishing opened the door to new models of peer review, including much broader participation. Pre-print servers such as ArXiv (founded 1991) and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN, founded 1994) allowed authors to post draft articles, in part to seek informal commentary, but also to stake priority claims. In the 2000s, a sea change toward greater transparency across the sciences led to considerable revision of previous norms (Wilkinson et al., Reference Wilkinson, Dumontier and Aalbersberg2016). Some journals adopted more open or even fully public review processes, presenting articles online for comment by a larger scientific community, or by anyone at all, before publication. The IPCC has followed this trend.

11.3 What Is the Value of Peer Review?

In my own experience as an author, peer reviewer and editor, the process usually improves the quality of publication and weeds out many errors of fact, logic and calculation. Yet as suggested earlier, peer review is not a formal audit, its quality is highly variable, it cannot be standardised, it can reflect numerous biases, and it can miscarry, rejecting valuable contributions while accepting shoddy ones. Thus, although scientists hold the practice in high esteem, peer review is anything but a truth machine. So what are its benefits?

First, it operationalises crucial scientific norms. One of these is methodological scepticism: peer review invites an evidence-based, ‘prove it to me’ approach to knowledge claims – perhaps the most fundamental element of any scientific method. Reviewing others’ work through this lens teaches reviewers how to think sceptically about their own work as well. Another is communalism. Science is organised community learning, a collective effort whose unique value stems from the care and attention of many individuals and the wide sharing of knowledge. Peer review also acts as a form of expert certification, similar to advanced academic degrees (reflecting training) and institutional affiliation (reflecting acceptance by other scientists).

Second, peer review serves a gatekeeping function. As already observed, this can be highly problematic. Yet it also benefits the scientific community in numerous ways. It reduces the likelihood of error and promotes collective attention to methodology. It also slows growth in the sheer number of scientific publications, a problem in its own right that is now especially acute in climate science (Haunschild et al., Reference Haunschild, Bornmann and Marx2016). The gatekeeping function of journal review plays a critical role in IPCC assessments, by screening out material self-published by individuals, political interest groups, advocacy organisations, and others. The AR6 WGI report cited over 14,000 publications. Without the gatekeeping role of journal peer review, an almost unimaginable volume of dubious material from websites, self-published books and other ‘alternative’ publication venues might be submitted for formal assessment. This is not speculation: some reviewers of AR6 presented blogs, personal ‘audits’ and other self-published, unreviewed work for consideration in the assessment.

11.4 Review of IPCC Assessments

IPCC rules of procedure developed in tandem with the composition of its First Assessment Report (AR1) in 1990. Bert Bolin, the IPCC’s first chairman, attached great importance to basing AR1 only on peer-reviewed publications (Bolin, Reference Begum, Lempert, Ali and Pörtner2007). Peer review of the assessments themselves was discussed at the first session of the IPCC Bureau in 1989, which took the decision to establish a review process that would include scientists from developing countries (Agrawala, Reference Agrawala1998b). Importantly, review of science assessments differs substantially from journal peer review. Whereas journal reviewers have the power to recommend rejection, IPCC reviewers can only recommend revisions (including elimination of statements or entire topics). The focus of assessment review is therefore to ensure consideration of all relevant material and accurate characterisation of the full range of results (Oppenheimer et al., Reference Livingston, Lövbrand and Alkan Olsson2019). Box 11.1 summarises the different forms of peer review conducted by the IPCC, and these are elaborated in the following paragraphs.

Internal review. IPCC assessments begin with an onboarding meeting. There, each chapter team begins to fill in and expand the very brief chapter outline previously scoped out by IPCC leadership (see Chapter 3). In a few weeks, each chapter team rapidly composes a ‘Zero Order Draft’ (ZOD). The ZOD is incomplete and quite rough, with many elements existing only as placeholders. The purpose of this stage is to generate a skeleton structure, allow all LAs to get a sense of the entire report, and discover areas where additional content, expertise and cross-chapter interaction will be needed (see Chapter 18). LAs comment on the ZOD in a spreadsheet; once compiled, all comments are made available to all LAs. This internal peer review strongly guides early revision.

Expert review. Revision of the messy, incomplete ZOD results in the much more developed ‘First Order Draft’ (FOD), which is then opened to expert review. Unlike journal peer review, where journal editors determine who qualifies as a ‘peer’, IPCC ‘expert’ review is open to essentially anyone: ‘Because the aim of the expert review is to get the widest possible participation and broadest possible expertise, those who register are accepted unless they fail to demonstrate any relevant qualification’ (IPCC, 2020a). Despite significant outreach by the IPCC, the majority of reviewers are male and most are from the developed world (see Chapter 7).

Most reviewers of the AR6 WGI FOD were climate scientists or others with genuine expertise. However, some very active reviewers listed no affiliation with any scientific organisation and had no publications other than blog posts or other self-published materials. Nonetheless, at least in my own experience, these unaffiliated reviewers occasionally flagged significant errors and contributed valuable revisions. A further observation is that because reviewers’ names are attached to comments, those of senior scientists and experienced IPCC authors may be weighted more heavily by chapter teams. Thus prestige as well as expertise can affect responses to review comments; often there is no principled way to tell the difference. At this stage and beyond, chapter authors are required to respond to all comments. If they reject a comment, they must explain why. Typical reasons for rejection include out of scope (for example, promoting a policy, or unrelated to WGI purposes), not supported by published peer-reviewed literature, or no scientific evidence provided.

For authors new to the IPCC – as were about 30 per cent of the 234 LAs, including me, contributing to the AR6 WGI report – the scale of effort required by this review process comes as a very rude shock. It takes approximately four months for the IPCC’s Technical Support Unit (TSU) to format and distribute the FOD for an eight-week comment period, and then compile the comments received. Meanwhile, revision of the draft continues at a rapid pace. This time lag means that chapter text has already been extensively changed and a great deal of new material added before LAs can even start to respond. As a result, responding to comments entails a tedious, confusing back-and-forth between the comment sheet, the formatted FOD and the active working draft.

Despite the warnings of experienced LAs, many of us underestimated the huge amount of time required to do this job well. Many comments cited publications we had not yet considered, requiring us to locate and read them on the fly, or to consult LAs from other chapters for help in interpreting what we learned. Notwithstanding its somewhat chaotic character, this review dramatically improved the draft and extended its evidence base.

Governmental and expert review. Revisions to the FOD result in the ‘Second Order Draft’ (SOD). This time, both experts and the 190+ United Nations member governments participate in the review. To avoid politicisation, government representatives cannot draft any part of the main report; they participate in review on the same basis as experts. At this point several Review Editors – senior scientists with previous IPCC experience – are assigned to each chapter, to provide external oversight of the final review stages. One Review Editor assigned to my own chapter was exceptionally diligent, while the other two were less so. For them as for us, the task of reviewing a 100,000-word, highly technical chapter and evaluating thousands of comments while also working a day job proved overwhelming.

Revision of the SOD leads to the ‘Final Government Distribution’ (FGD) of the Final Draft. At this stage the draft is essentially frozen; however, the TSU revisited comments on the FOD and SOD and required all chapters to respond to any comments they had previously missed or deferred for later action.

Approval. In the last 18 months or so of the assessment, each WG designates a subset of authors (Coordinating Lead Authors or LAs) to draft an SPM, typically around 30 pages in length. The SPM is first reviewed by experts and governments, then revised, then subjected to another round of government review. Once finalised, the SPM goes to a plenary approval session, where government representatives approve the SPM line by line.

The role of government representatives is problematic with respect to the concept of ‘peer’ review. While some are very well informed on the scientific issues, others are not, and all are by definition representing the interests of their own nations. The approval session includes both SPM authors (IPCC scientists) and government representatives. IPCC procedures codify that SPM approval ‘signifies that it is consistent with the factual material contained in the full scientific, technical and socio-economic Assessment or Special Report accepted by the Working Group’ (IPCC, 2013a). However, there are many ways to summarise any large, complex document, and seemingly minute changes in language can matter greatly to policymakers’ reception of IPCC reports. As a result, during the approval process government representatives may propose alterations to SPM statements that suit their own purposes (De Pryck, Reference De Pryck2021a). Still, the consensus requirement generally limits the power of any one nation in the approval process, and government acceptance greatly strengthens the political authority of the assessments (see Chapter 20).

11.5 Controversies Surrounding the IPCC Review Process

When AR2 was released in 1996, the IPCC’s rules of procedure became the flashpoint of an intense public controversy. WGI’s SPM and Chapter 8 both included the following sentences: ‘Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited … Nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate’ (IPCC, Reference Houghton, Meiro Filho and Callendar1996: 5, italics added).

Here, the IPCC for the first time acknowledged a better-than-even likelihood of anthropogenic causes for observed global climate change. The sentence was introduced into Chapter 8 and the SPM by Chapter 8 Coordinating Lead Author Ben Santer following the final IPCC WGI plenary meeting at Madrid in November 1995. There, the exact wording of that sentence was intensely debated – with representatives of some oil-producing states, notably Saudi Arabia, seeking to soften its terms – before the final revision quoted above was approved (Houghton, Reference Houghton2008).

Following release of the revised text, physicist Frederick Seitz and others charged the IPCC with ‘deception’, saying it had ‘corrupted the peer review process’ and violated its own rules of procedure (Lahsen, Reference Lahsen and Marcus1999; Oreskes & Conway, Reference Oreskes and Conway2010). These charges were demonstrably untrue; the changes were introduced by consensus among the participating governments. Nonetheless, the episode drew attention to IPCC rules, which lacked clear closure mechanisms for the review process (Agrawala, Reference Agrawala1998b: 624; Edwards & Schneider, Reference Clark, Mitchell, Cash, Mitchell, Clark, Cash and Dickson2001). As a result, in 1999 the IPCC revised its rules of procedure and added the Review Editor oversight role described earlier (Skodvin, Reference Skodvin2000a; Siebenhüner, Reference Siebenhüner2002).

A second example resulted from controversy over errors found in AR4 (O’Reilly, Reference O’Reilly, Barnes and Dove2015) and criticism of the IPCC resulting from the 2009 Climategate episode. In 2010, the UN Secretary-General and IPCC Chair jointly requested an independent review of IPCC rules and procedures – including its peer review practices – by the InterAcademy Council (IAC), which appointed a panel of distinguished scientists (see Chapter 6). Like many independent commentators (Jasanoff, Reference Jasanoff2010a; Beck, Reference Beck2012), the IAC panel found that due to the social significance of climate change and the authority attached to the IPCC’s conclusions, ‘accountability and transparency must be considered a growing obligation’ (IAC, 2010: viii).

The IAC review found the IPCC’s existing peer review process essentially ‘sound’. However, it noted that the number of review comments had more than doubled, to more than 90,000 for the entire AR4. Fourteen years later, some 78,000 comments were received on the AR6 WGI report alone. Adding the comments received by WGII (62,418) and WGIII (59,212), this makes a total of 199,630 comments! The IAC concluded that under time pressure, some review comments might not receive sufficient attention, which is consistent with my own experience.

11.6 Achievements and Challenges

The current IPCC review process is the most extensive, open and inclusive in the history of science – a landmark achievement by any measure. Further, the organisation has responded to ongoing critiques with ever greater transparency and accountability. Today’s review process is essentially public, open to anyone (within limits: for example, the English language standard presents a significant hurdle for non-speakers). Since AR4 (2007), the IPCC has published the FOD and SOD of each report on its website, along with all comments and responses. This review process means that minority views and outlier results have been carefully considered by the climate science community at several points, from journal peer review through multiple rounds of assessment review. Nonetheless, no review process can eliminate all errors or guarantee the truth of conclusions.

One very difficult challenge is that comments that dispute the fundamental framing of particular issues may be dismissed, unless a significant constituency supports reframing them (O’Reilly et al., Reference O’Reilly, Oreskes and Oppenheimer2012). For example, during review of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (2018), many commentators expressed ‘unease’ about the report’s presentation of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) as ‘a viable carbon dioxide removal technology at grand scale’ (Hansson et al., Reference Hansson, Anshelm, Fridal and Haikola2021: 1). Yet this misleading framing remained in the final report. Hansson et al. identified several ‘boundary work’ strategies successfully used by LAs to deflect reviewer critiques of BECCS’s potential. For example, LAs claimed that the IPCC mandate restricted them from being ‘policy prescriptive’ (see Chapter 21) – a deflection I encountered and resisted, yet also sometimes used myself, in working on AR6 WGI.

Two further challenges lie in the inexorably growing numbers of relevant publications and review comments. Machine learning techniques have been proposed to augment human processing of scientific literature (Callaghan et al., Reference Callaghan, Schleussner and Nath2021), but such methods may never be accepted as substitutes for expert judgement. The huge number of review comments already imposes an infelicitous trade-off on volunteer LAs, who must balance their time between careful evaluation of the scientific literature, composition of the report, and responding with care to peer review. Any attempt to restrict the openness of the review process – for example, by requiring reviewers to provide stronger evidence of expertise – could lead to backlash over transparency. Increasing the number of LAs and/or Review Editors might help, yet would also add complexity to an already elaborate report-writing process.